Yeah, just like how physical mail works. Nobody ever has to deal with spam in their physical mailbox. (/s)

That just becomes marketing budget for spammers (which is to say, those for whom email is a component of a revenue stream), and a layer of cost friction for everyone else — meaning that you only really reduce the percentage of email that's actually sincere, non-"hustle"-driven communication.

I disagree. I don't believe that would solve spam you would just force the spammers to use much more aggressive tactics. If you introduce a fee to email you're only hurting the people who actively communicate back and forth via email as a primary method. Mailing lists anyone?

Spammers will take your $0.02 fee per email as an operational expense. Most spam is not sent by the spammers themselves from their own servers but are instead relayed through a third party who handles the delivery part on their behalf who are paid money to run these spam campaigns through their servers instead anyways so they are already paying a fee, this is just an extra cost on top of what they are already paying to do it.

With Twitter being worse than ever while also implementing the paid-for blue check, I'm no longer convinced that nominal costs solve much of anything. Maybe it's a different model (per email vs per account w/ Twitter), but I feel like scammers/phishers would pay the premium.

While extremely idealist and would never happen in practice, I think I'd rather see a provider that enforces KYC-esque requirements and is a closed iMessage-esque system. I took my phone number off my main mobile device due to spam (pretty much everyone I know has an iPhone) and have not looked back since.

If I want privacy, I'll self-host. If I don't care, I'll use the monopoly.

Hum, maybe finally a good use of a distributed, append-only database (like blockchain)?

Reputation ledger where reported spam takes a lot off (say 100 units), sending an email costs little (1 unit), and possibly a way to earn more reputation by not having particular email be reported as spam (1.1 units back after 2 weeks for every sent email).

To enter the system, you need to start with at least 1000 units.